The one good thing about the walking dead is that they don't drive.Heaven forbid, of course, that the undead transgress heteronormativity rather than just our expectations regarding gender roles among vampires, zombies, werewolves and other things that go crunch in the night.
All it really takes to outrun a zombie is a car. Also, a bullet to the head will stop one cold. And that may explain why so many men prefer zombies to vampires: zombie stories pivot on men's two favorite things: fast cars and guns. Better yet, zombies almost never talk. Vampires, especially of late, are mostly a female obsession. Works like Twilight and True Blood suggest that the best way to defeat a vampire is to make him fall so in love that he resists the urge to bite. And that's a powerful, if naïve, female fantasy: a mate so besotted he gives up his most primal cravings for the woman he loves.
Vampires are imbued with romance. Zombies are not. (Zombies are from Mars, vampires are from Venus.)
Stanley comments that -
vampire stories mostly focus on the relationship between the undead and the living, usually with lots of overwrought dialogue, erotic subtext and decadently lush scenery. Zombies don't as a rule socialize with their prey. It's the group dynamic among survivors that provides the drama. Conflicts matter more than courtship, and the characters spend most of their time barricaded behind bolted doors and boarded windows. There is little occasion for conversation, let alone changing into evening attire. ...
One oddity of the genre, and perhaps its appeal, is how orthodox it is. For all the many sequels, remakes and parodies, zombies stick pretty closely to the original flesh-eating model: They don't have personalities, they lurch, and they are always hungry for human flesh. Sometimes the predators are from outer space, but more commonly zombies are spawned by a man-made armageddon. (Variations are usually minor, as with the light-sensitive zombies in the Will Smith movie I Am Legend.)
